Wednesday, January 30, 2008

THE LIST

On Tuesday I wrote about the Tribune and mentioned in passing that Sam Zell is making noise again about marring the beautiful Daily News building with some new piece of crap, and how much that annoyed me. I promised a post about the consequences of that.

The potential consequence is for the Tribune to be placed on my NEVER AGAIN list. I feel like Frank Costanza when I talk about the NEVER AGAIN list, but it is what it is, right? Anyway, I feel that I am a fairly reasonable man. I don’t ask very much. In fact, sometimes I ask nothing. However, when I encounter bad service and rudeness to back it up, I tend to react badly. Hence the NEVER AGAIN list.

The first entrant on the list was Radio Shack. In specific, my beef was with the shit-assed Radio Shack at 3336 North Western Avenue, in Roscoe Village. After roughly 17 years on the list, I provisionally took Radio Shack off to buy a cable to allow me to listen to L’s iPod through the stereo upstairs. Of course, I walked in to the Radio Shack at Harlem-Irving Plaza, found my cable right away, and then it took me 15 minutes to pay for the cable. Consequently, Radio Shack has been removed from the NEVER AGAIN list, but is on the “that place sucks” list. A lesser designation, but it still makes them the last option when I need to buy something.

The second entrant on the list is still in good standing as a NEVER AGAIN location. It is the restaurant Italian Village in the Loop. Their sin? Not so much losing my dinner reservation, although that was bad enough (especially since it was for dinner with my future in-laws). Instead of stepping up, apologizing, buying us a glass of wine and finding us a table, the maitre monkey they had working basically said he didn’t believe that we ever made a reservation, and offered to let us wait in a bar if we wanted to. I find that the important thing when encountering such a tremendous flub is not just to leave, but to tell everyone you know to AVOID ITALIAN VILLAGE because they don’t care about their customers. Over the years I have nixed a number of functions to be held there by groups I am involved with. All I can say is that four glasses of wine and a table would have been much cheaper.

I can’t really think of anyone else on the list, although I leave open the likelihood that L will be able to remind me of several others. I usually forget about them until I encounter them, and then I go all Frank Costanza.